As per Dez's questions a few threads back but he had no reply...
Is there a difference in having to 'run in' the engine, as in driving like a grandma for the first 1k kms before going anywhere near the red line? Or is it ok to drive it as it was intended at get go..
i was told from someone that new car engine goes thru heavy testing and running in these days prior to them getting installed into the car.. is that true?

 

I make sure mine has well and truly warmed up before redlining (10-15 minutes).

I didn't redline mine until around 2000kms. Kept it under 7000 for first 1500 then 7000 regularly for next 200 then 8000 for next 100, 8500 next 100 then started to redline.

 

I just did what it sats in the manual.

Kept it under 7000rpm till I'd passed 1000K. (I actually waited till I'd had my 1000K service, but I would recommend taking it up so that you can get them to check if you have any problems)

 

I was very kind to 1000k, then occassional hard blips and some extended 7~8krpm for the next 1000k, since then it's just "normal driving"

 

What Kev said :D

 

I couldn't wait. For the first 1000km I kept it below 7000rpm most of the time, but I occasionally took it to redline once the engine was nice and warmed up. I think that what's more important is how you drive it, not how many revs you do.

I avoided putting the accelerator flat to the floor and fast take-offs from the lights, opting intead for no more than 1/2 - 3/4 throttle. Remember that at 6000rpm, the shaft is only actually spinning at 2000rpm and at 9000rpm, it is spinning at 3000rpm, so I don't thing the high revs hurt it as much as it would if you were running in a piston engine. (Kas + co. correct me if I'm wrong here). Rotaries love to rev!

 

Yup, rotaries love to rev. If it was bad, the ECU would cut out overrevving. Go drive a variable valve engine and you'll see what I mean. When the engine is cold, the redline (fuel starve) is set lower than when the engine is warm. I can't see why Mazda couldn't do the same with the rotary. They haven't, so I assume their engineers are happy the engine can go to 8500 when cold without severe damage.

 

apart from the fact that my engine was a dud, these things LOVE to rev. I was hitting redline with just over 500kms on the clock.

Running in is not so much about driving like a *****, its about keeping the revs variable. They must never sit at a particular rpm. Your first few hundred kms, take it out on a long winding roads or mountain roads where you are forced to keep changing the revs and gears.

The reason for doing this, is the seals must bed into the housings as it spins around at different rev ranges. When you first start a brand new engine is had little compression until the seals start making good contact with the housing. Hence, more fuel/oil used in the first few tanks.

These engines burn alot of fuel/oil and a problem with this which is why you should use mineral based oil is the carbon deposits left behind. Revving and thrashing this engine actually cleans this out.

In my FD when i was city driving I'd hardly be on the gas. After a week or so of this i'd take the car out on a big run and thrash the life out of it, she loved it. She'd run so much smoother after that.

 

I recently sold an old Honda Civic GLi little two door with the rear hatch, a 1994 model, the cute one with a roundish body, with >=140,000k on the clock, and I drove the thing hard, safe, but hard, and each visit to the honda shop they spanner jockes kept telling me they were amazed at the car's ability to handle the fact that I "drove it like I stole it".

But it was driven hard, all over the place, fast, slow, heaps of gear work, hardly every used the breaks, just down shot throught the gears at pace.

I'm now driving my 8 like that, guess old habits dye hard, but I'm certain that it's driving better as a result, although I have a feeling that at the top end of 4th and 5th it's starting to loose power compared to it's first few weeks.

Add to that the fact that I'm now spending more time drifting through corners and getting a feel for more and more gentle "easing" into corners with a little clutch work to step out the back end, keep it stepped out without having to just power down hard and then ease back onto a straight line without the car throwing me around like a jelly baby.

The shop boys tell me they recomend alternating revs, speed, gears etc, as "rotary's thrive on it" ( qhote unquote ).

++dez;

ps: oh, and yes, now that it's more than a month old, it's officially carried rack mount servers in the back seat, front seat, and now it's full of ethernet cables and 19" brackets - sigh.. so much for the kiddie gloves * grin * ( oh, and my 2 year old has eaten and consumed liquids in the back seat in her child seat - oh those crumbs.. they get everywhere! )